Can I complain about customer service for a sec?

We are going to St. Louis in June for a quick weekend get-away - YEA!! I was making reservations on-line with Travelocity and realized that our flight gets in at 10 in the morning but check in isn't until 3pm. I called the hotel and she said we could request early check in and they would do the best they could to get us in there. There was no place on the travelocity website to request this so I spent 20 minutes on hold waiting to talk to a customer service rep to ask if I could make this request.

OH MY WORD!!!! The guy proceeds to tell me that ALL hotels have a 3pm check in and why they do that. Uhhhh....thanks....I understand. When I told him that I spoke personally with the hotel and they told me to request early check in he said, "well, perhaps you could wait in the lobby until check in". Laughing, I said, "Well, I really don't want to sit in a lobby for 5 hours with my 2 children". He said, "well, perhaps you could just simply change your flight to accommodate the check in time". ARGHHHHH!!!!! I said, "Well.. you certainly haven't been much help to me, goodbye" and hung up on him.

I called the hotel back and spoke to the same lady again and she was so nice and just laughed when I told her what the guy had said. She told me that before we fly out that morning, we could call the hotel, tell them we are on our way, and they would try and get something ready for us. If that doesn't work, they have a room they can lock our luggage in so we can venture out and check in later.

Wow. So much for the customer is always right, huh? Talk about a major inconvenience. Thank goodness the lady knew what she was talking about.

I wouldn't have even minded if he simply said, "I'm sorry, there's no way to request that on the website". But to treat me like an imbecile by telling me why hotels have a 3pm check in and then suggest that we sit in the lobby is a little out there I think.

wow thats weird...I always thought you HAD to be checked in by 3:00 LOL We rented a room in Tampa because my daughter had went to s summer leadership program for ROTC kids and she was having an award ceremony there. We didnt want to have to get up first thing in the morning and drive to Tampa so I rented it online. I saw on there it said if you had not checked in by 2 or 3 they could not guarantee you a room. I called the hotel and explained we probably would not be there until 4 or so and the lady I talked to said that was totally fine since I had called she would note that we would be checking in late. I think checkout time was 11:00 AM at that hotel

Typically you have to notify them of late arrivals. We often arrive at 11pm or later, so it's something I note on our reservation no matter what. If we get their earlier, sweet! If not, we're covered. It's actually more of a pain to check in early.

Of course, what that imbecile said was ridiculous!!